Snowshoe Regional Sewer Collection and Treatment System

Exploring All Options

While developers demanded a centralized regional system to better serve Snowshoe and the surrounding resort community, the proposed project’s high cost and anticipated environmental impact put a halt to its progress. Century was trusted to prepare 22 possible decentralized alternatives that could be more cost-effective than the $40 million centralized proposal, performing life cycle cost analyses comparing treatment technology plant capacity, energy requirements, and gravity versus low-pressure force main collector systems.

Leading the Charge

When an alternative was finally chosen, Century was responsible for leading all necessary related services, including providing all surveying, preparing all easement plats, obtaining all environmental and construction permits, developing the design, overseeing the construction and inspection, and preparing the operation and maintenance manual and as-built drawings. The project was completed for approximately $25 million, including engineering and land acquisition costs – well below the originally proposed $40 million plan.

A State-of-the-Art Solution

The chosen alternative included the abandonment and demolition of eight existing wastewater treatment plants, the construction of approximately 10 miles of gravity and force main collection system piping, 100 residential grinder pump connections, nine major sewage pump stations, and a 1.65 million-gallon-per-day advanced wastewater treatment plant utilizing membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology. Constructed entirely inside a single building, the MBR produces very clean effluent water by utilizing microfilters. They eliminate the need for secondary clarifiers and tertiary treatment, allowing a plant to be built with a much smaller footprint.